Asian Addicts Anonymous

Watching a Korean variety show with Lee Seung Gi and other Korean artists as guests, they talked about their recent trip to China. While Lee was there, he noticed that in the Chinese markets they were already selling a CD of his that had yet to be released in Korea and to top it off, it had several songs which weren’t even included on his Korean release. He bought the CD and had it on the show with him. The other Korean artists said they had experienced similar things as well from early releases of albums to Chinese artists singing recently released songs and stealing choreography.

The Chinese entertainment black market is nothing to sneer at.  They are quite good at getting other countries’ dramas and music out either before it’s official release or immediately following (almost next day). If you go online to eBay, Amazon, and other e-marketplaces, chances are you’ll come across these Chinese pirated goods. The great thing about it is how professionally they are packaged and marketed. Glancing at it and looking at all the information, you would not know it is in fact pirated goods. This is how we get English subtitled dramas (especially Japanese) right after they have been aired and haven’t even been released officially through either the parent company or a US subsidiary. One tell with these dramas is, however, the barcode. The barcodes or ISSNs are not legitimate and are, in fact, identical to one another. Products should have different barcodes since they are not the exact same item, so having multiple DVDs all of different dramas sharing one ISSN number isn’t realistic at all.

China isn’t the only one pirating and cheating people. There are Americans who do it as well, although by no means as professionally as China or Malaysia. When buying Asian dramas and cds, it is good to be cautious and make sure you are actually buying the official releases and not some pirated copy. Some sellers are straightforward about it, others are not so forthcoming. It is good to do some research first when looking into buying Asian media. YesAsia is a pretty good place to check to see the latest releases and to see if US or official English subtitled versions do exist. Or you can check out US companies that license Asian media (like VIZ and YA Entertainment).

I know some people think, “so what,” but it is best to try to stay away from the black market goods. One, it is illegal merchandise. Two, many of these pirates take the free subtitles from hardworking fansubbers for profit, which causes some fansubbers to fold operations. The whole basis of fansubs is to provide drama fans with free translations with the hope that the viewers will buy the original product when it is officially released. Three, most of the time the subtitles for the dramas are Engrish or just really badly translated. If you think about it, it’s a translation of a translation. In the case of many Japanese dramas, they are first translated into Chinese and then into English. Thus you may have wasted money for a translation that is definitely not worth whatever you paid for it.

Food for thought.